BUTTE -- A creamy blanket of fog covered the Summit Valley on a cold morning in 1996. 

It was the kind of gloomy morning that caused folks to wonder, staring out their windows with cups of coffee, how much of the football game they would actually be able to see if they went up to Montana Tech that day.

But as kickoff grew nearer, even the sun decided it wanted to witness the Orediggers play the biggest postseason college football game ever held in Butte. It was a bright, frigid November day to decide the NAIA Division I semifinal. Either Montana Tech or its archrival, Carroll College, would become the first Frontier Conference program ever to reach a national championship game. 

Those who played and coached in the game remember the fog, the icy, slippery conditions at Alumni Coliseum, and the resounding Oredigger victory. Montana Tech, using a stellar second half, won 49-28 and sent Tech to its first and so-far only NAIA title game appearance. 

It was also, despite nearly 100 years of gridiron rivalry, the first time Montana Tech and Carroll ever met in the NAIA playoffs. 

On Saturday, the two storied programs will do it again. The unbeaten and third-seeded Orediggers will play host to No. 14 seed Carroll for a 1 p.m. kickoff on Bob Green Field in Butte. One Frontier team will reach the national quarterfinals. The other's season will end. 

***

The fog waited until the last minute to lift on November 23, 1996. 

During player introductions — when a member of each team was introduced and met at midfield for a handshake — it was still very much present. 

"I was thinking, 'oh-oh, how am I going to see the punts? I hope I don't mess up,'" Orediggers return man and receiver Davis Almanza told The Montana Standard's Bruce Sayler after the game. 

"You couldn't see across the field," All-America defensive lineman Bryan Larson remembered. 

And so the accounts differ. When the last players met at midfield for the pregame introductions, Montana Tech's man either took a cheap shot from his Saints counterpart, or he simply slipped on the icy pitch. The Oredigger sideline interpreted it as the former. 

Tech had already bested Carroll two times that season en route to the Frontier Conference championship. The Orediggers won a close one in Helena, 21-13, on October 12. Then Tech boatraced the Saints November 2 in Butte, 45-22. Three weeks later, they were ready to square off again. 

"We knew we were better than they were in '96," Tech fullback Josh Vincent, a senior on the team, said. "We handled them pretty well twice."

And the team had played the entire season with a chip on its shoulder. Preseason prognoses didn't think much of the Orediggers, favoring defending conference champion Montana Western, always-tough Carroll, or Rocky Mountain with All-American quarterback Bob Bees. 

Tech didn't do much to change the pundits' minds in the early going. The Orediggers started 2-2, losing at Fort Lewis and Southern Utah in non-conference play. But things came together in a gritty 30-29 road win at Rocky to start October. Quarterback Mark Jensen emerged as a two-way threat, and Jensen, Vincent, and running backs Jimmy Watson and Chris Turner became a formidable four-pronged rushing attack behind a stellar offensive line led by All-American Mike Schumaker. 

"Our offense really started clicking with Jensen playing well," Vincent said. 

The defense gained a reputation as a hard-hitting group, led by Larson and All-America linebacker Paul Hladky, who finished the season with 145 tackles. 

Vincent, who practiced against them every day, said the defense was "like a Butte guy in a street fight." 

Tech dropped a pair of conference matchups at Western, but the Orediggers bested both Carroll and Rocky Mountain twice to win the league title and earn the No. 2 seed in the NAIA Division I playoffs. 

Carroll's season was nearly as good, and the Saints took the No. 3 seed into the postseason, which meant they were headed to Butte.
 

*** 

It was no surprise to anyone that both defenses made stops on the opening possessions. 

Sayler, in his game story, said it was "as rock 'em-sock 'em a spectacle as was expected." 

But Carroll got on the board first, taking advantage of the lack of traction to execute coach Bob Petrino's (Petrino's grandson is current Montana Tech head coach Kyle Samson.) option offense. Saints star quarterback Jason Grovom scored a 2-yard touchdown run with 4:56 left in the first quarter. Grovom was stopped on the two-point conversion, though, and Carroll led 6-0. 

Tech drove right back down the field, scoring a minute and a half later on Jenson's 34-yard pass to Almanza. (Almanza later told the Standard that he was so open because he'd fallen down off the line of scrimmage, and his defender abandoned him to cover the run.) Kicker Dustin Sersland's PAT made it a 7-6 Oredigger lead. 

Carroll had the answer again, however. Grovom broke a 31-yard run on the last play of the first quarter, part of a huge day (241 yards passing, 86 yards rushing, three total touchdowns) for the Saints quarterback. 

"We probably should have tackled him," then-Montana Tech head coach Bob Green asserted. 

The Saints got the two-point conversion and led 14-7 after a quarter.
 

Tech's offense used the quarter break to get going. Carroll had thrown a different defensive look, the 46 formation, at the Orediggers in the playoff game, and Green and his staff made an adjustment to look more downfield. The Orediggers bit off big chunks of yardage at a time in two second-quarter scoring drives; Turner and Jensen both scored rushing TDs to give Tech a 21-14 halftime lead. 

After the half, it was all Montana Tech. 

But don't ask Green about his halftime speech. 

"Halftime speeches are overrated," he said. "For one thing, you always had to kind of hurry with halftime speeches here because it's a hell of a hike back to the locker room." 

Rather, it was the Orediggers' superior athleticism that explained the second-half outburst. 

"I think probably we were better up front," Green explained, "and we had more weapons." 

Tech took less than a minute to score after the third-quarter kickoff. Almanza set up a Turner touchdown with a 31-yard reverse run that earned a first-and-goal. Later in the quarter, Lorenzo Snyder made an acrobatic 41-yard touchdown catch from Jensen, and then the Tech     quarterback "stepped through a tiny hole in the line," as Sayler wrote, to break a 52-yard touchdown dash. 

"They couldn't tackle those guys," tight end Shawn Evans remembered. "Zo [Snyder] would just run over three of them." 

By the 8:12 mark in the third, Montana Tech led 42-14. The rout was on. 

Vincent added Montana Tech's last score, a 6-yard run in the fourth quarter, before Carroll scored twice late to bring the score to 49-28. 

"We gutted the elk," Green told Sayler postgame. 

***

Montana Tech went on to lose to Southwestern Oklahoma, 33-31, in the championship game on a controversial fourth-quarter safety. 

But the camaraderie of that group is still on full display. A large contingent of that group is involved in Montana Tech's EMETAD Club, the football booster organization, and they're stalwarts at home games and tailgates. Green, an Oredigger and Butte legend for whom the Montana Tech field is now named, is at nearly every game. 

Hladky said the culture built then is what makes their support continue today. 

"We were 100 percent bought in," Hladky remembered. "[The captains] were just incredible leaders. I think it was a connection that Bob Green had with us as well. I always wanted to work hard for Bob Green, and that's just the culture that he brought out." 

Those alumni see similar qualities in this season's Oredigger team, sparked by Samson's fire as their head coach. 

"He's an inspiration," Hladky said, "and that reflects in the kids working there and their record. They clearly have got that buy-in, and they're winning games because of it." 

Tech is 11-0, the most wins and longest unbeaten stretch in program history, and the No. 3 seed in the 2025 NAIA Football Championship Series. The Orediggers received a first-round bye in the playoffs. Carroll comes to Butte by way of its first-round win over St. Thomas University. 

The Orediggers beat Carroll, 30-19, in Helena September 6, setting up Saturday's opportunity for another season sweep. 

But for Green, who spent a career drilling the discipline and routine required to mold good football players into great teams, he knows the 2025 Orediggers won't focus on the wrong things. 

He also knows the importance of taking a step back to appreciate what they're in the middle of doing. 

"I encourage those guys to enjoy the ride," the former coach said. 

Visit Montana Tech athletics' home online, GoDiggers.com, anytime for up-to-the-minute news and coverage of the Orediggers. Give Montana Tech athletics a like on Facebook, and follow the Orediggers on X and Instagram at @DiggerAthletics.

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Story by Mark Robertson. Scott Juskiewicz of the Montana Tech Library assisted with this article.